Shade Empire / Wolfheart

Two excellent Finnish acts in one package, touring their home land – a travelling circus you simply HAVE to see. It seems many people had shared my opinion. As I heard, quite big crowds had welcomed them on every of their stop-overs between Oulu and Kouvola before – and the second last gig of the tour should not be any different. Helsinki´s On the Rocks was full even an hour before the gig – and the fact I only found out next day that another STALKER had indeed been attending the show, too, might give you a picture how full it got later …

Wolfheart,
the new baby of Melancholic Metal veteran Tuomas Saukkonen, has obviously not only gathered the faithful Before The Dawn/Black Sun Aeon followers, but attracted quite a lot of new fans too. The self released debut album “Winterborn” had even made it into top-chart positions (read more about this project in our Fresh Act interview section). This evening´s live line-up featured besides Mika Lammassaari (git), Joonas Kauppinen (dr) and the mastermind himself on voc/git a new guy on the bass, Lauri Silvonen.

The set list contained pretty much all of the album songs, opening with the catchy Hunt and ending with the mighty Routa 2, and in between sheer awesomeness! I didn´t notice any flaws, glitches or sound problems – and I assume neither did 99,9% of the enthusiastic crowd, therefore I assume there were none anyway. A tight and intense gig that should move this band into top chart position of “live presentation” scales. “We want more!”

Shade Empire
entered the stage and pretty much conquered the club in an instant, I cannot describe it any better. A triumphal return of those guys from Kuopio to the capital city… The now immense fan crowd simply went nuts, and photographing became a Kamikaze mission … The guys around this charismatic front man Juha Harju focused the set list naturally on their fourth album ´Omega Arcane´, released last summer, the first for Candlelight Records, but also threw in some older hits. Die-hard fans had to wait until the very end for Ja Pimeys Laskeutui, though. For me the new material was maybe a bit too much of Black Metal elements that I did not feel as impressed as the rest of the crowd. Nevertheless – if you want to check them out yourselves, in March they go on an EU tour, go to the band website for details!

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Klaudia Weber

reckless and merciless dictator, so KNEEL!
In other words, editor-in-chief, translator, website and ad admin, "Jane of all trades" - - -
addicted to books (everything between Lord Of The Rings & quantum physics) and music, mainly Metal made in Finland. Furthermore, there's painting, drawing, movies, theater... so you can expect some variety on this website too.